Today I received a cooled mono 1600 camera from ZWO for testing on DSO targets.

I coupled it with a Orion Nautilus filter wheel. Filter wheel has T threads and so does the camera. This setup puts the filters 15 MMs in front of the sensor. The test rig includes a Vixen VSD (380MM F/3.8), Telescope service OAG, Orion SSAG, Celestron AVX, Custom Scientific LRGB 1.25" mounted filters.

My initial impressions are as follows:

Camera is extremely light weight compared to CCDs, but it's well constructed.

It cools to - 20°C at 50% power indoors and keeps it there.

ASCOM driver seems to be stable with Maxim.

Download time is ridiculously fast compared to what I'm used to with CCD and DSLR cameras.

Right now I'm taking 400 bias and 100 300" darks.

I took some flats with Lum filter and I see no significant vignetting.

Please let me know if anyone has any specific tests you want me to run. I'll try my best to run them.

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That worries me about the cooling. But maybe the power % is just wrong. If it is 68 deg inside, it must be really cold outside, or you have a big cooling bill. When you get a chance I would like to see what you get when you set the cooling to max.

Are you sure on the 17mm from CMOS face to Filter Face? That is pretty close and is similar to the QSI with the internal filter wheel. If this is producting no noticable vignetting, then that is consistent with prior estimates from two sources. You are the third. I wonder what 20 or 22 mm would do? That is what it turns out to be with the AXGYL filter wheel with stock adapters if I recall correctly. The 1mm Precision Parts adapter places it at about 17mm.

I think the 178 has the same cooler, and I just hooked it up to maxim and and set it to -30 and the ambient temp is 22 and it got to -20.7 at 100%. It got to -15 at 50%. The way it reports power is strange. It seems that if it goes past 50%, then you should probably back off.

And now it has settled at -19 deg, which is 41 to 42 deg of cooling. And then when I started taking darks, it rose a bit further to -17.5 and now has settled at -17.3, which is -39.3 delta. When I stop, the temp starts heading back to -19, but when I start again, it starts heading back to -17. A delta of 35 would be safe.